House Math: Getting to 218

From 2005 to February 2017, Tom Price, an orthopedic surgeon now in Trump’s cabinet committing health policy malpractice, represented Georgia’s 6^th Congressional District.

On April 18 there will be a special election to choose his successor. There are 18 candidates, 11 Republicans, five Democrats, 2 independents. The election is a “jungle” primary — meaning there will not be separate contests to nominate a Republican and a Democrat but a free for all. If someone wins at least 50%, he or she will be elected. If not the top two finishers advance to a June 20 runoff.

One Democrat, Jon Ossoff, has the endorsement of the great John Lewis and has emerged as favorite, not only in Georgia but nationwide, among progressives.

So Jon Ossoff is the canary in the Democrats’ coalmine as we look to the political storm created by and continuing since the election to reverse what until now seemed a certainty: The certainty that Republicans have an unbreakable lock on the gerrymandered House that will continue to and after the 2020 Census when lines are redrawn by state legislatures, two thirds of which are Republican controlled.

But there is a still more fundamental reason the House map looks as it does. It is the south where one thing above all drives and always has driven politics.

Race.

Despite sparse Democratic gains of six seats, including one in Florida and one in Virginia, Republican southern congressional totals were barely dented at the last election.

According to Bill Moyers, key assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson, on the day LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law LBJ, a southerner, said, “I think we have just delivered the south to the Republican Party for the rest of my life and yours.”

LBJ, a southerner, knew that after four centuries of slavery, rebellion, Civil War and Jim Crow, race trumped – as it still does — all else in the south, where Republicans seized their opportunity with a race-based “Southern Strategy”.

It worked.

The Southern Strategy propelled Republicans to control the House the same way Jim Crow gave Democrats a near total House lock from 1932 to 1994.

The hard evidence for this is in the opposing House majorities elected in 1962 and 2016.

Elected in 1962, the 88^th Congress relied on a truly bipartisan majority to pass the Civil Rights Act over near unanimous opposition from southern House (and Senate) members.

That House had 258 Democrats and 177 Republicans. Republicans had a slim 165 to 162-seat edge outside the 11 deep-south states. But in the 11 states that formed the traitorous Confederate States of America, Democrats won 96 seats to just 12 Republicans.

Then how did the Civil Rights Act pass? It passed because 136 Republicans joined 154 Democrats to vote for it.

Yes Virginia, once upon a time we had bipartisan government.

But in the 11 southern delegations the vote was 8 Democrats yes — against 87 Democrats and 10 Republicans opposed.

Now, fast forward to 2016. The House elected Nov. 8 has 241 Republicans and 194 Democrats, virtually a mirror reversal of the Civil Rights Congress.

On Nov. 8 in the 11 deep-south states the GOP won 99 seats to 39 for Democrats (since 1962, population shifts have increased total house seats in the 11 states from 112 to 138).

The makeup of the 11 confederate state delegations as elected Nov. 8 is Alabama, 6R, 1D; Arkansas, 4R, 0D; Florida, 16R, 11D; Georgia, 10R, 4D; Louisiana, 5R, 1D; Mississippi, 3R, 1D; North Carolina, 10R, 3D; South Carolina, 6R, 1D; Tennessee, 7R, 2D; Texas, 25R, 11D, and Virginia, 7R, 4D.

This is the resulting House math:

Total seats: 435.

Needed to control: 218.

With a head start of 99 southern seats, Republican math is 218 minus 99 = 119 seats needed from the remaining 297 in the other 39 states — 34%.

For Democrats, with 39 seats in the south, the initial calculation is 218 minus 39 = 179 seats needed from the remaining 297 seats — 61%.

But it gets worse if you factor in dozens of decisively Republican districts in red states like Utah, Arizona, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Kansas, Indiana, and West Virginia; then add GOP districts from big chunks of blue states like central Pennsylvania and upstate New York. Do that and the Democrats’ challenge is to win 80 percent of the 297 seats outside the south.

Impossible right? Right. Until now.

Now it’s possible and possible starts April 18 in the Ga. 6^th.

Why? Well, Price won by 23% Nov. 8, but Donald Trump won the Ga. 6^th by just 1.5%.

Let’s see then how Jon Ossoff, polling first right now in the jungle primary, makes out April 18 and June 20 if, as seems likely he is one of two top vote getters in the first round.

Meantime looking to 2018 midterms, there are other places where Democrats, who need to win 24 seats to take House control, can score gains. Here’s one example.

Orange County, California, has 3 million people spread over six congressional districts, five held by Republicans. In 1980 it gave Ronald Reagan 67% of its votes for president. In 2016, Orange County gave Hillary Clinton 51% of its votes for president. All those oranges? They are ripe for the picking (and, homage to Lin Manuel, we all know who does the picking).

For Democrats looking for a path to House control outside the south, the road goes right into and through places like Orange County.

But for now the first congressional test whether the outrage, protests, marches and resistance can translate politically is the Ga. 6^th special election. Because none of it matters at all if it doesn’t translate into winning back the House and Senate.